Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By : Thomas Urban
Book Image

Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide

By: Thomas Urban

Overview of this book

Cacti is a performance measurement tool that provides easy methods and functions for gathering and graphing system data. You can use Cacti to develop a robust event management system that can alert on just about anything you would like it to. But to do that, you need to gain a solid understanding of the basics of Cacti, its plugin architecture, and automation concepts. Cacti 0.8 Beginner's Guide will introduce you to the wide variety of features of Cacti and will guide you on how to use them for maximum effectiveness. Advanced topics like the plugin architecture and Cacti automation using the command-line interface will help you build a professional performance measurement system.Designed as a beginner's guide, the book starts off with the basics of installing and using Cacti, and also covers the advanced topics that will show you how to customize and extend the core Cacti functionalities. The book offers essential tutorials for creating advanced graphs and using plugins to create enterprise-class reports to show your customers and colleagues. From data templates to input methods and plugin installation to creating your own customized plugins, this book provides you with a rich selection of step-by-step instructions to reach your goals. It covers all you need to know to implement professional performance measurement techniques with Cacti and ways to fully customize Cacti to fit your needs. By the end of the book, you will be able to implement and extend Cacti to monitor, display, and report the performance of your network exactly the way you want.
Table of Contents (23 chapters)
Cacti 0.8Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Pop Quiz Answers
Index

Time for action – Backup and Restore a pre-defined report


Logon to your Cacti web interface.

  1. Go to NMID | Backup/Restore.

  2. Check on the checkbox next to the Interface Report as seen in the following screenshot:

  3. Click on the Go button at the top to create a backup file.

  4. A new table will be displayed at the bottom of the page as seen in the following screenshot:

  5. Check on the checkbox next to the Interface_Report.xml file.

  6. Click on the Go button at the bottom to restore the report. The CereusReporting plugin never overwrites existing reports, but will create a new report with the same data as the original one, as seen in the following screenshot:

What just happened?

You just created a backup of your Interface Report and also restored it. The XML backup file contains all the necessary information to fully restore the report, including:

  • General Report settings

  • Defined Report Items

  • Defined Report Schedules

Moving the report to another system will not be possible as the report items refer to the...